OIL
CPC greenlights boss pick
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan’s (CPC, 中油) board of directors yesterday approved a proposal to tap China American Petrochemical Co Ltd (CAPCO, 中美和石油) president Paul Chen (陳綠蔚) to replace CPC president Arthur Kung (孔祥雲). Chen worked in CPC management for 30 years before joining CAPCO in January last year. He said he plans to maintain current policies to improve CPC’s business. Chen said he planned to increase CPC’s oil and natural gas exploration projects as the company needs to grow its oil and natural gas outputs by up to 10 percent a year to reduce reliance on imports and trim losses. As of Aug. 31, CPC’s accumulated losses were NT$71.3 billion (US$2.41 billion), company data showed.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
ENERGY
Formosa refinery still limited
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) yesterday said it plans to maintain the operating rate of its Mailiao refinery in Yunlin County at about three-quarters of capacity after it restarted a unit that reduces sulfur from fuels. The nation’s only publicly traded oil refiner restarted a residual desulfurizer at the 540,000 barrel-a-day plant on Sunday and a crude distillation unit on Sept. 10, company spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said. The refinery’s crude processing has risen to 400,000 barrels a day this week, from 300,000 barrels last week, Lin said by telephone. Formosa is in “no hurry” to boost throughput as it has sufficient stockpiles of middle distillates, he added.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last